A lot of people are of the opinion that Musk should not have called out the NYT and taken a much more laid-back line. But consider for a minute the Iraq war - years after the start many people still believe that Saddam was directly involved in 9/11. Once people form an impression, even if that impression is completely, utterly and factually wrong, it will persist for a long time.
Right now is a very crucial time for EVs and Tesla in particular when this popular impression is being formed. If nonsense like "Electric cars don't work in the cold" gains traction, it will be very bad for the industry. And if you think that quote sounds ridiculous, it is exactly the take-away a casual reader would have gotten from that NYT review. Remember, to this day a sizeable chunk of the population still believes Saddam was directly involved in 9/11.
So I say, Musk did the right thing - if you don't defend yourself, you might end up with nothing to defend.
Some research has suggested that refutations can actually strengthen the original myth.
For example, all of the coverage of on Iraq not having WMDs may have actually ended up strengthening associations between the two. Somehow the "not" gets lost for a portion of the population. (Similarly autism & vaccines, Obama & Kenya, and a million other myths.)
Is it a general issue with how people process facts/myths or is there something more specific at work here? The myths you cited are held true by a certain sub-population and fueled by a certain "news" outlet. Moreover, the "news" outlet claims that it brings you the stories that others won't, in a way causing mistrust of other actual news networks. Therefore, once the seed of the myth is planted, it is very hard to refute it for anyone since they are now also a part of the myth.
For example: Obama said multiple times and with multiple supporting documents that he was born in the US, yet I still encounter people that say that those were all fakes, and that Obama, his staff, and the media are trying to cover up the real story. When they are pointed to these facts they point back saying it's a conspiracy. In this situation first you have to prove that the people talking are not conspiring to deceive the listener, which is much harder to do than just to disprove a myth itself once a trusted source is doing so.
Edit: In terms of this contravercy, I was left with the impression that NYT did not act in good faith and neither did Tesla. I do not believe we will ever know exactly what happened since the circumstances were very specific. However, this definitely left a sour taste. The impression that I got is that Tesla will fight any negative press, whether it is objective and impartial or not, and they will fight dirty. For a moment do s/Tesla/Ford/g in everything you have read about this story and then ask yourself if you would still buy a Ford after that.
If I remember correctly the correct action is not to directly refute an incorrect claim but rather tell a story of your own with it's own details and twists.
Technically correct, however the brake booster only activates when you are braking, in which case the engine is either spinning down to idle or idling. I am not certain of this, but I think this means it is essentially "waste work", because the engine would be idling anyway, and the power drain of the brake booster is not significant enough to warrant feeding the engine extra gasoline.
This is distinct from things like A/C, which place a non-trivial amount of load on the engine even at idle, and often require things like a higher idle speed while engaged.
That's the point - it's "kind of" true. But the takeaway from that NYT article is "you'll get stranded," which is much more painful than the truth: "be careful in the cold."
I read the NYT article. The takeaway for me was that there are serious problems with the car in cold weather. Regardless of it is "kinda of" true, cold weather concerns aren't "nonsense."
Who's downplaying? Cold weather takes preparation whether it's fossil fuel or electric. EV's take a different type of preparation and a different type of care, although Tesla has done a lot to make that transition smoother.
The point here is the claim that EVs don't work in a cold climate, which is disingenuous at best.
A fair headline for that NYT review should have been "Like ICE cousins, EVs also affected by the cold". Obviously, a far more boring headline than "Stranded on The Electric Highway".
Everyone knows your gas consumption goes up during winter, so everyone just puts gas in more often. Everyone who lives in colder climates know to plug in the block heater otherwise your car won't be moving anywhere in the morning.
EVs have some great benefits, unfortunately they're not a silver buttlet and you still have to take care of them. You just take care of them in a different way than ICE cars.
My range in my Kia Rio 2012 has not dropped more than a couple mpg (36 normal, 32 in the cold and wind) this whole winter in ND. EVs in -20°F seem to have a much larger drop off.
Wow. I live in one of the most conservative states in the country, and I've never heard anyone suggest that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11. If anyone did, I'm sure they would be immediately called out and ridiculed by pretty much everyone. That's not really what the controversy in Iraq was about, but I don't want to derail.
A better example might be the hysterical fear of nuclear power that our country developed after Chernobyl.
Personal experience doesn't really help with understanding something like this, so the fact that no one you know has said anything in support of this idea doesn't mean that it's not widely believed.
At the time of the war, as many as 70% (!) of Americans believed that Saddam was responsible for 9/11, and since then the number has slowly declined to the mid-20s (with a weird period where the number increased around 2007). For a falsehood that, as you say, is ridiculously unsupported.
I think that I'm just in denial about how stupid people can be. It just boggles my mind. Al Qaeda almost immediately took credit, the government almost immediately verified that it was Osama Bin Laden, and there are lots of other reasons why it's pretty unlikely.
I could understand if average Americans thought that Saddam might have some minor relationship with Al Qaeda, but even that's a stretch. Saddam was barely a Muslim, let alone an extremist. As long as you didn't live in Fallujah, Iraq used to be one of the more religiously tolerant countries. The only reason the Iraqi flag had "Allahu Akbar" on it is because he wanted to gain the sympathy from his neighbors during the Gulf War.
Same here. Just because the Bush administration spent a few hours tracking down leads in Iraq in the aftermath of 9/11 doesn't mean there's more "Saddam did 9/11" belief than "Elvis is alive" belief. Yes, in retrospect it was a stupid war and put a nail in the coffin of my belief that military action was the one thing our government had a hold on, but stop spouting the straw-man lie that Iraq was payback for 9/11.
For quite a while a majority of the US did believe Saddam was directly involved in 9/11 [0]. Although it's a minority opinion now, it's still a quite sizeable minority.
Anecdotally, I remember hearing such claims/speculation in the news frequently just after 9/11, before they moved on to other excuses.
What's the sample size for that survey? Howard Stern sent someone wandering through the streets of one of the poorest parts of New York, and found a bunch of idiots who either didn't know who the president was, or thought that Mitt Romney would win the election solely because he is an African American. That doesn't mean that everyone in New York is stupid. Any survey that supposes to represent a national opinion should involve at the very least, several million people.
I'm just a bit taken aback, because that's such a ridiculous and idiotic view to hold. It's almost as stupid as believing the holocaust didn't happen.
>So I say, Musk did the right thing - if you don't defend yourself, you might end up with nothing to defend.
Musk didn't defend the biggest issue: The drop in charge and reported range at the overnight stop. He glossed over it completely, instead focusing on the .6 mile "circle."
Oh great. So now you are arguing by analogy (an analogy other participants here have challenged for how you described the situation) to give a rationale for Musk's behavior. So let's see, rather than actually look at the issue of buying a Tesla Model S or not on the basis of how it performs in the climate where I live, or look at investing in Tesla Motors stock based on how it and other common stocks perform in the market, I should just refer to your analogy for my analysis? Well, what is the analogy? Is Elon Musk George W. Bush here, or is he Saddam Hussein?
He accused the writer of fraud, of wanting to drain the battery by driving in circles for a whole 0.6 miles. Imagine, 0.6 miles (the reviewer said he was trying to find the gas station in the parking lot, a very plausible explanation)
Something like this would have done wonders, compared to the mess they created: "We are sorry that x writer had a bad...however we still believe that our car is ...... As always our engineers will keep working on improving the batteries even more and educating our users...
I wonder if Elon Musk has ever worked in a service job before, like being a waiter in a restaurant. Try to imagine this exchange:
Customer: "Waiter, there's a fly in my soup."
Waiter: "But that's impossible, I've seen the recipe and fly is not an ingredient."
The biggest thing I've learned from serving customers is to approach complaints and challenges with the humility that hey, they just may be right. It is a mark of inexperience and immaturity to go on the offensive from the perspective of "stupid, bad customer, misunderstanding my product/service again."
(And I know that the reporter is not necessarily a customer, but as a reviewer, he represents their potential buying interests and should be treated as such.)
"from the perspective of "stupid, bad customer, misunderstanding my product/service again.""
Exactly. And further to that point it's the golden rule. He who has the gold rules. The NYT has the audience and the ear of the public. That's the gold.
"mark of inexperience and immaturity"
The test for this of course if anyone after this experience would follow the same path as Musk did (Musk or someone simply knowing about this). If the answer is "no" then a lesson was learned which dovetails with "inexperience".
not to put too fine a point on it, but tesla has a lot of "gold" in the form of an inflated stock price which is driven by hope and expectations.
Tesla has lost money every year for the past four years, and lost $400 million in the most recent calendar year. NYT made $160mm in after tax profit last year.
NYT market cap is $1.3bn.
Tesla market cap is $3.9bn.
attention is gold, and gold is gold. perhaps tesla is trying to make sure they have an explanation for when they miss sales expectations - blame any sales shortfall on the NYT.
Didn't the data pulled from the car indicate that the reviewer was almost certainly trying to fabricate a bad review?
If I were the editor in chief of this publication, I'd definitely be investigating this to find out what happened.
If what's been alleged turns out to be true, the reviewer is a POS and should be fired, blacklisted from the business of reviewing automobiles or any other products for that matter, and publicly called out for being a liar.
A journalist's sole contribution to society is his word. If that word becomes worthless, he needs to shift into a different line of work.
> "Didn't the data pulled from the car indicate that the reviewer was almost certainly trying to fabricate a bad review?"
Lies, damned lies, and statistics. The data pulled from the car indicated to Musk that the reviewer was sabotaging the review. The counterpoint was that all of the supposed instances of "fabrication" were either user error, Tesla's customer support error, or normal use.
For example, Musk claims that the author was deliberately driving in circle in a parking lot to run down the battery. The author claims he circled the parking lot a couple of times to find the unlit charging station in the dark (a claim since corroborated by third parties visiting the location).
> "If I were the editor in chief of this publication, I'd definitely be investigating this to find out what happened."
The NYT investigated this incident, and they found that the original author was imprecise in his notes, but that the claims against the vehicle were fair and accurate.
> "If what's been alleged turns out to be true, the reviewer is a POS and should be fired, blacklisted from the business of reviewing automobiles or any other products for that matter, and publicly called out for being a liar."
Unfortunately, most of the internet (HN included) were calling for all of the above without investigating the allegations.
For example, Musk claims that the author was deliberately driving in circle in a parking lot to run down the battery.
I think more damage was done in this assertion than anything else in the whole drama with the exception of the flatbed. Here is Musk making a big point of travelling half a mile and raising the profile of a minor issue - making people think that half a mile is of considerable importance for the vehicle. 'It's not fair, he (slowly) drove half a mile to kill the battery' translates neatly into 'driving half a mile will kill the battery'
Under ordinary circumstances a half mile would be nothing. But when the car is telling you that you have zero miles of charge remaining, the half mile could be the difference between getting an uneventful charge and getting a dramatic story about the car dying within walking distance of the charging station.
However reasonable the idea, it still is one of the prominent themes in the whole debacle: "half a mile is an issue to an EV" - particularly given the massively changing ranges throughout the story. It adds the the air of mystery and unreliability.
Personally I'm surprised that more wasn't made of the incredibly long time it takes to 'fuel' the car. Long trips are simply not an option if you've got to sit for an hour for them to rechange - at a 'supercharger', no less. And if the supercharger is in use, that becomes two hours. With such long wait periods, it is entirely normal for a person to think "well... maybe 45 minutes will do... or perhaps 30"
Interesting. I read the initial articles with the data pulled from the car, the first few reviews of the car, and a couple of other articles, but I wasn't aware that his data was being contested.
I'm just saying generally, if it is proven that a journalist intentionally manipulates a product review, that should probably be the end of his career. As I stated, a proper investigation is always important before any action is taken.
> Didn't the data pulled from the car indicate that the reviewer was almost certainly trying to fabricate a bad review?
No, in fact several people who are prominent in the field of the use of data in journalism have written long essays on how this episode shows that data is subject to interpretation. It's very clear that Elon Musk looks at the data and sees one thing, and that the writer sees another; Those of us who have some degree of training in the field and little emotional attachment can look at the data and see that much of it is not particularly relevant to either story.
That said, the car reviewer was an idiot for not plugging the vehicle in overnight; although Tesla should have emphasized that in their instructional materials.
And Musk made his hole deeper with his whole "going for the throat" attitude. I mean, is that how he's going to react to a customer complaint?
If you make your living by writing, the only product you deliver to the world is your written word. I wasn't belittling journalism, I was simply stating what it is. Words can and do have a profound impact on the world. Language is arguably the most important invention in the history of humanity.
Yes, journalism often involves research, editing, and countless other tasks, but the end product, is the writing that is produced as a result of those processes.
A pure opinion piece shouldn't involve intentionally false claims, so it's not really what I was talking about. A product review should contain a mix of opinion and fact. Obviously, my information about the NYT review was out of date, and the claims about him have been proven false. That's why, as I stated, it's important for an investigation to take place.
As far as holding a journalist to his word, I stand by it. If a journalist holds an opinion that is wrong or simply unpopular, that doesn't necessarily mean that he's untrustworthy, but if it's a grossly misinformed opinion, it might make him look like an idiot. I don't advocate firing a person for writing about an unpopular or wrong opinion, but if someone intentionally makes a false claim, it's definitely a consideration.
I guess my problem is that you're defining journalistic contribution to society as merely 'being trustworthy', nothing else. Nothing about information dissemination or airing of issues. The sole contribution. It'd be like saying the sole contribution of police to society is looking recognisable by wearing a uniform.
The sole contribution of the journalist is the value that the reader extracts from his writing. In the highly specific example of a person writing a product review, his ability to give an honest assessment of the product is obviously the most significant concern.
In a more general sense, honesty is extremely significant in nearly every sort of non-fictional publication. As you said, there are some cases where fact-checking is either unimportant, or outright impossible, I didn't mention it because that's the sort of thing that should be taken for granted.
The sole contribution of the journalist is the value that the reader extracts from his writing.
This is overly idealistic. For example, journalists are quite adept at massaging public opinion for vested interests, often without the reader being aware that this is happening.
He wasn't trying to find a gas station. He was trying to find one of the Tesla superchargers. And as we can see from the video below they are very, very hard to find (that giant structure is NOT the charger).
Holy spin doctor. You realize that video was explicitly made to make clear the supercharger are not at all hard to find? And you realize that you don't see the 17" screen with the GPS that has the location absolutely pinpointed?
1. I didn't see any explicit signs pointing to the supercharger. Admittedly, the glare from the headlights could have obscured a couple of those, but at 25 seconds, there doesn't seem to be any reason for the driver to turn at that point.
2. It's completely unlit. The nearest lighting is on the other side of the parking lane. The gas pumps have plenty of light. That alone makes it hard to find, especially if you're not sure what you're looking for.
3. The car in the video had to make 2 specific turns to get to it. Again, the gas pumps are immediately in front of you, and have signs pointing to them.
It may also be the case that the car, or the charging infrastructure, or the system that is the car plus the charging infrastructure, is not ready for the NYT's general audience or its writers. It could just be a usability issue that early adopters would not have had a problem with.
What is the supercharger? Is it those white pylons that the car was next to when the video ended? If so, then not only does it seem that the driver had zero problems finding them, but they're conveniently located near the entrance to the lot, and the GPS directed him precisely to the correct location.
0.6 mile is what, two or three circles around a large parking lot? Even if you know how the superchargers look I don't think it's impossible to miss them once or twice.
IIRC, the offramp from the highway was .3 miles from the beginning to the first turn, so if Broder missed even one of the turns, .6 miles is pretty easy to get to.
Right now is a very crucial time for EVs and Tesla in particular when this popular impression is being formed. If nonsense like "Electric cars don't work in the cold" gains traction, it will be very bad for the industry. And if you think that quote sounds ridiculous, it is exactly the take-away a casual reader would have gotten from that NYT review. Remember, to this day a sizeable chunk of the population still believes Saddam was directly involved in 9/11.
So I say, Musk did the right thing - if you don't defend yourself, you might end up with nothing to defend.